Oxygen therapy is the administration of oxygen as a therapeutic modality. It is widely used for a variety of purposes in both chronic and acute patient care as it is essential for cell metabolism, and in turn, tissue oxygenation is essential for all physiological functions. Oxygen therapy can be used to benefit the patient by increasing the supply of oxygen to the lungs and thereby increasing the availability of oxygen to the body tissues, especially when the patient is suffering from hypoxia and/or hypoxaemia. Oxygen therapy may be used both in applications in hospital or in home care. The main home care application of oxygen therapy is for patients having severe chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).
Oxygen may be administered in a number of ways. A preferable way of oxygen administration is given by a so called on demand generation of oxygen, or an in situ generation, respectively. Referring to this, commercial solutions, so-called oxygen concentrators, or separators, respectively, are widely known. These oxygen concentrators mostly separate oxygen from an oxygen containing gas, so that the oxygen is provided on demand, i.e. directly before use. Most known oxygen concentrators require a compressor to compress the oxygen containing gas. Furthermore, oxygen, preferably pure oxygen, has to be generated. Therefore, most known oxygen concentrators comprise a membrane, in particular an organic membrane, a molecular sieve, or the like, to separate oxygen from the oxygen containing gas.
One of the major drawbacks of the known oxygen concentrators is given by the high costs which are generated with respect to producing and operating said devices. Furthermore, undesired constituents of the oxygen containing gas, mostly nitrogen, are adsorbed on the membrane thereby causing the requirement of a so-called swing process by which the adsorbed gas is desorbed from the membrane. During that desorption step, a separation of oxygen is not possible, because of which two membranes are desired to work in an anticyclical manner which further increases the costs. Apart from that, the compressors are mostly noisy leading to a decreased convenience especially when the oxygen concentrator is used over night. Furthermore, the generated oxygen is non-sterile, because of which a further measure of disinfection is often desired or necessary.
Traditional oxygen concentrators are bulky, heavy and require ongoing maintenance by patients and home care providers. Such devices produce noise and heat. Furthermore, a reduction of costs (a compressor unit comes up with a significant contribution), such as recurrent purchase costs and servicing costs is desirable.